Review: The Adventures of Tintin doesn't mess with a good thing

Film Review: The Adventures of Tintin (3.5 stars)

3 stars

Steven Spielberg has often flirted with the “boy-and-his-dog” archetype, although the dog is often played by an alien (E.T.), a sidekick (Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom), a robot (A.I.) or another animal (War Horse, which opens Christmas Day). In this one, a movie he’s been planning since the ’80s, the director reduces the formula to its simplest form. Boy + Dog = Adventure.

The boy is Tintin, an enterprising journalist of uncertain nationality, youthful but of indeterminate age. (Ostensibly Belgian, he’s voiced by 25-year-old Jamie Bell in his native English accent.) The dog is Snowy, an white fox terrier who’s either the smartest or second-smartest dog on film this year. (See Uggie in The Artist.)

The adventure — and they don’t call it The Adventures of Tintin for nothing — is a rollicking, Indiana Jones type of affair involving pirates, pickpockets, policemen, sunken treasure, wild chases, coded messages and something called the Milanese Nightingale, a MacGuffin if ever I heard of one.

It begins with Tintin purchasing an old model sailing ship in a flea market. A couple of shady shipophiles try to part him from his new acquisition, but Tintin isn’t having any of that. Eventually, his stubbornness results in his being kidnapped and imprisoned on an actual ocean-going vessel. Snowy manages to tag along, of course; where’s a boy without his dog?

On board, Tintin meets a kindred spirit in Captain Haddock, a fellow prisoner and a walking (well, lurching) defence of high-functioning alcoholism. Haddock, voiced by Andy Serkis, is of little use when either falling-down drunk or stone-cold sober. There’s a sweet spot of inebriation, however, that makes him a redoubtable ally.

Tintin will need one to fight Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig), an old-school villain whose ancestors have apparently been fighting with Haddock’s forebears for centuries. (I always wonder if these things skip a generation; three lifetimes seems an awfully long time to spend plotting revenge.)

Tintin’s original comic-book author, the Belgian writer Hergé, was not one to let details get in the way of a good story, and Spielberg follows suit. The film isn’t clear on the year, for instance, though judging by the vintage of automobiles, floatplanes, motorcycles, tanks and other chase vehicles, it’s the mid-to-late-1930s, about the same time Indiana Jones was raiding that Lost Ark. There’s even a scene that looks like the same North African market from that film.

The biggest difference, however, is that Spielberg (with some hand-holding by motion-caption master and co-producer Peter Jackson) has made his first foray into computer-generated 3D animation. He proves a natural with the form, his (virtual) camerawork dizzying but fluid, and never confusing.

An early plane-flight sequence is thrillingly shot, but the director’s virtuoso moment comes when Tintin, trying to recover and keep hold of an errant slip of paper, runs and plummets and motorcycle-sidecars and ziplines through (and over) a steeply terraced Moroccan village while being chased by several evil thugs and one angry bird. It takes place in a single eye-catching, mind-blowing, uninterrupted shot.

Other moments in the film don’t work quite as well. The physics of having an entire three-masted ship swing from the yardarm of another, for instance, are anything but clear. Also, the mix of nearly photo-realistic characters (Tintin and Sakharine especially) and the more cartoonish supporting cast (bumbling cops Thomson and Thompson, played by pals Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) is occasionally jarring.

Still, it’s hard to fault Spielberg’s instincts. Working with a trio of writers and a pastiche of Hergé plot lines, he balances childish and adult tensions, arriving at something a steely six-year-old could enjoy. Guns are fired and cudgels clash, but the language remains salt-free. “Billions of blistering blue barnacles!” and “Blithering fools!” is about the worst of it. And there’s some wonderful visual humour as well.

Tintin is that rare movie that promises a sequel (ital) and (unital) seems capable of delivering. Jackson is said to be interested in directing the next adventure, Red Rackham’s Treasure. If that fails to pan out, he and Spielberg should shanghai the rapidly listing Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Based on their work on this tally-ho escapade, they could easily save that sinking ship.